Gaming & Culture

Last month, I had one burning question for Mario Bros. creator, Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto. I asked him why Princess Peach isn’t a playable character in the new Mario game, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which was just released yesterday.

He said:

Well, originally I thought it would be nice to have Princess Peach in there as a playable …

Tony Hawk has become a staple in the gaming industry over the years and Tony Hawk: RIDE marks the 10th iteration of the Birdman’s signature video game. TECHLAND has obtained exclusive screenshots, trailer and packaging art for RIDE, which launches on 11/17.

I’ve been a flighty gamer this fall. Like a wee little faun hopping from glen to glen. After my passionate — and I’m talkin’ Twilight passionate — obsession with Halo: ODST, I briefly, sluttily hooked up with a whole series of games. Like:

Raise your hand if the original BioShock title from 2K gave you the heebie-jeebies. It’s okay, no one can see how much of a weenie you are on the Internets if you raise your hand. I promise. Just the thought of certain splicers gives me goosebumps. So you can imagine my apprehension at the prospect of reentering Rapture at any point in …

Lev and I are both big fans of McGee’s original Alice and over the weekend a trailer for the sequel hit the Web. It looks absolutely batsh*t crazy. The Return of Alice is slated for a 2011 launch on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Let’s talk about what happened…

Update: It turns out that this is a fan made trailer that American and Spicy …

Last week we sat down with Warren Spector and spoke to him about his upcoming project: Disney Epic Mickey. The artwork looks amazing despite the Wii’s lackluster graphics capabilities. This is a Mickey that we’ve never seen before. It’s a radical change for Disney from what Spector told us. We also learned that Warren is a huge …

It’s like how the package art on action figures was always so epic, and then you open it and you have this little injection-molded plastic turd with like one articulated joint. I would happily pay $12 to see movies based on these trailers. But will the games live up to them? How could they possibly?

Writing about the Grand Theft Auto video games for the Time 100 issue, I unpersuasively argued the following semi-flippant point: the Houser brothers who write and create these games are the spiritual successors to Balzac and Twain and Wolfe. They are societal super-reporters, stuffing the gaming experience with detailed observations …

Perversely, I am attempting to solve Geo-Defense Swarm in a “clean” way — i.e. w/out resorting to drugs (other than the usual cocktail of caffeine and alcohol), genetic modification or consulting online strategy guides. Honor demands it. For some reason.

But I am getting manhandled by this thing. Still haven’t beaten level one on …